Create Your Own TV Series for the Internet-2nd edition. Ross Brown

opportunities in the film business you hadn’t previously considered.

       Businesses looking to create branded content: Though it may be tempting to skip ahead to Chapter Fourteen (which is devoted specifically to business uses of web series), I urge you to read the other material as well. The principles of effective storytelling and the creation of memorable characters apply not only to fictional comedies and dramas but to the stories businesses want to tell about themselves and their brands.

      Finally, I hope everyone has FUN. Use the book to expand your imagination. Use it to increase your creativity. Use it to motivate the part of you that is dying to express yourself but doesn’t quite know how to get started.

       WHY A SECOND EDITION?

      The first edition of this book came out in February 2011, and it has been a great success. I measure success not only by the number of copies sold but also by the ways in which the book is helping those who’ve read it. It has been adopted as a text in web series classes at major film schools across the country (Chapman University, Loyola Marymount University, and Emerson College, to name a few) and around the world, including film schools in South Africa, Singapore, and China. The instructors have been uniformly enthusiastic about the book and how it has helped their students make better web series.

      Independent filmmakers have been equally generous with their praise. At book signings and panels where I’ve appeared in Los Angeles, Chicago, Marseille, and elsewhere, I’ve been overwhelmed and gratified by the number of people who’ve come up to me to say, “Thank you for writing this book. It’s just what I needed to help me make my web series.” And one of my proudest moments came when my writing and teaching colleague Bill Rosenthal, a writer and producer with over 20 years of top-line credits on shows for ABC, NBC, and HBO who recently wrote and produced the web series Greetings from Home for a major new media company, read the book and said, “I wish I’d read this before I made my show.”

      That’s some high praise, having a seasoned pro say he learned a lot from your book.

      So if the first edition was so great, why bother with a second edition? The simple answer is that in the world of the Internet and Internet TV, a few years is a very long time. Things move at light speed, are constantly changing and evolving. And so I felt it was vital for me to update the book to keep it as current as possible and as useful as possible for readers. So the new material in this book includes

       Updated examples from new web series to illustrate key concepts

       Fresh information on the proliferation of new festivals devoted to web series

       A new section on marketing not only your series but yourself

       A new section on animated web series

       A brand-new chapter on business uses of web series, a rapidly growing area of opportunity for businesses and creators alike

       A brand-new set of interviews with creators who have advanced their careers by making web series, professionals who are finding new creative and financial opportunities in the web series world, and the founder of the LAWEBFEST, the world’s first festival devoted entirely to web series

      All this new material is in addition to the tips, guidance, and instruction already present in the first edition. So if you are new to this book, welcome. Enjoy the book, and I hope it helps you make great web series. And if you’re a fan of the first edition, welcome back, and thank you for your continued interest. I hope this new edition helps you make even better web series than the ones you’ve already made.

       PREFACE

      Every writer, producer, network, studio, and cable channel in Hollywood is spending thousands of hours and millions of dollars trying to figure out how to connect with the YouTube audience and make a hit web series. But it’s a solid bet that the next breakout short-form hit will come not from Hollywood but from the mind of someone outside the established media power structure — someone like you.

      That’s not to say this trailblazer will necessarily be a rank amateur. Maybe he’ll be a writer who’s been trying to break into network television but hasn’t succeeded yet. Or maybe she’ll be writing for another medium that Hollywood or the Internet suddenly discovers (can you say Diablo Cody?). Or maybe it will be a veteran writer who has been churning out bland sitcoms for decades, someone seen as over the hill, someone who throws caution to the wind and creates something totally new and original because the traditional doors to employment are now slammed in his face (can you say Marc Cherry, creator of Desperate Housewives?). Or maybe it will be someone now in film school, or even in high school, who came of age during the digital era, thinks visually, and intuitively knows what her peers crave in the way of short video entertainment, in part because watching short videos is a normal part of her daily experience.

      The point is that everybody knows there is a huge, game-changing, hit web series lurking on the horizon, but nobody knows where it will come from. They know only that sooner or later, there will be a breakthrough smash hit in the Internet TV realm, so it might as well come from YOU.

      Webisodes are the Wild West of Hollywood, a vast expanse of territory with unlimited potential just begging to be explored and mined. The territory is open to anyone with a dream and the moxie to follow that dream. You may strike oil or find gold, or you may end up with a handful of dust. Either way, the journey will be exciting and rewarding for its own sake. It will challenge you, expand your creative horizons, and open your eyes and mind to all kinds of new skills you never knew you had lurking inside.

      But before you head out on this quest to create your own Internet TV series, you need a few vital supplies: some basic equipment and know-how, a workable series premise, a pilot script, a shooting budget, and shot list — in short, you need a plan.

      This book is designed to help you draw up that plan, step by step. You are HERE. Somewhere on the Internet is a place for a television series created by YOU. This book is the map that can lead you from where you are now — a person with a lot of creative ideas in his head but no clear idea how to turn those buzzing ideas into reality — to THERE, the creator of your own unique and exciting TV series designed for the Web.

      I know it can be done because my students at the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University have been creating innovative, entertaining web series since 2007. You know it can be done because you’ve surfed the Net, seen the good, the bad, and the ugly out there, and said, “I can do better than that.”

      You’re absolutely right. You can do better than most of what’s out there. And you don’t need a million-dollar budget or a Hollywood studio full of equipment to do it. Anyone with a digital camera and an ordinary computer has all the equipment he needs right now to make a web series.

      What you probably don’t have is exposure to the thought process involved in taking a raw idea for a short-form TV show and shaping that vague notion into a clear premise, defined characters, a story to introduce those characters in an engaging way, and the professional know-how to take that story through production and postproduction and end up with a polished and marketable pilot episode.

      Make no mistake: It won’t be easy. You can’t just slap together some half-baked notion, grab a camera, and point it randomly at things that strike you as interesting or funny. That’s just video masturbation.